The present invention relates to wireless electric power sharing, and more specifically, to wireless electric power sharing between vehicles.
In recent years, with the shortage of oil resources and the awareness of the importance of environment protection, vehicles fully or partially driven by electric power are becoming popular, which are referred to as electric vehicles herein. Electricity can be stored on board the vehicle using electricity storage such as a battery, flywheel, or supercapacitors. Due to capacity limitation of the on-board electricity storage, electric vehicles need to be charged frequently, especially for a long journey. Therefore, how to charge an electric vehicle has come to be a hot research topic. Currently the charging for electric vehicles is usually performed via wired connections (e.g., using a charging pole), while on the other hand, wireless charging for electric vehicles has drawn much attention.
With wireless charging techniques, electric vehicles may be wirelessly charged while stopped at charging stations. Further, electric vehicles may be charged by wireless power transfer technologies while they travel along a roadway embedded with power coupling elements. For example, coils embedded in the roadway may wirelessly provide electric power to an electric vehicle traveling on the roadway through interactions with coils carried on the vehicle.